.SHIP NOTES, SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS In September, the 1902 passenger steamship SS Columbia will depart lronhead Shipyard in Toledo, Ohio, and begin a 235-mile-journey across Lake Ontario to a temporary berth in Buffalo, New York. The steamship will undergo more repairs in Buffalo before next summer, when she wi ll be towed out the St. Lawrence Seaway and down the coast to New York. The ship is too large to transit the Erie Canal, so she will travel via the Welland Canal, up the St. Lawrence, and down the eas tern seaboard, then up the Hudson River to Kingston, New York. To make the long journey to New York possible, the hull had to be stabilized and more than 900 rivets repaired. SS Columbia Project has, in the meantime, launched an oral history project to collect firsthand stories from former passengers and crewmembers. While Columbia was out of the water in shipyard, the D etroit Free Press took detailed scans of the vessel inside and out to create 3D virtual tours, which are now posted online. To view the 3D tours or find out more about the project or how to donate, visit
SS Columbia
www.sscolumbia.org. (SS Columbia Project, 232 E. 11th St., New York, NY 10003; Ph. 2 12 283-3128) ... The Maritime Museum of San Diego launched its recreation of the 16th-century Spanish ship San Salvador on 22 July after a series of delays, from miscalculation of the vessel's weight-causing an obvious problem for cranes not built to handle the load-to inclement weather. A mostly volunteer crew spent the last 4 1/z years building the ship in Spanish Landing Park in San Diego. In July, the ship was transferred to a self-propelled trailer (donated for the project by Marine Group
Boat Works), then placed onto a barge for transit to Marine Gro up's ship yard in Chula Vista, where she was lau nched via a 300-ton travel lift. San Salvador will make her official d ebut on Labor Day weekend at the Port of San Diego's 20 15 Festival of Sail, hosted by the museum. San Salvador is a full-sized , fully operational vessel representing Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo's fl agship, which sailed up the California coas t in 1542. Cabrillo's arrival on the coas t was the first contact between Europeans and the native Kumeyaay people. The addition of San Salvador to the museum's fleet of historic and replica ships fills a gap in the time periods San Salvador
these ships represent. The museum h as sailing ships, steamboats, WWII submarines, a US Navy Swift boat, and other watercraft. San Salvador will be used by the museum as a floating classroom and will sail along the West Coast conducting educational programs for student groups and the general public. (MMSD, 1492 North H arbor Drive, Sa n Diego, CA 92101; Ph. 619 234-9153; www.sdmaritime.org) ... Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen has successfully recovered the bell from the sunken remains of HMS Hood. The British batdecruiser sank during an engagement with the German battleship Bismarck in the D enmark Stratits in 1941. She sank with shocking loss oflife-1,415of1 ,4 18 men died when she exploded and sa nk .
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SEA HISTORY 152, AUTUMN 2015